


Curves and Edges

by Swordy



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode Tag, Episode: s11e09 O Brother Where Art Thou, Gen, Season/Series 11
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-12
Updated: 2015-12-12
Packaged: 2018-05-06 09:34:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5411804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Swordy/pseuds/Swordy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All his life, others have wanted to use him, to possess him, to <i>own</i> him as a means to fulfilling their own destinies; Amara is just another name to add to that list.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Curves and Edges

**Author's Note:**

> Episode tag for Season 11, Episode 9 so spoilers for everything shown so far. I’ve got deadlines coming out of my ears, yet I _had_ to write this. I just wish someone better had written it. Unbetaed, so all mistakes are mine.

It takes him a moment to realise that he’s back in the park.

He studies his surroundings and he has to resist the urge to close his eyes. It’s all too bright, all too loud. It’s the same as when he was back from Purgatory, when everyday ordinary things seemed _wrong_. Then, he’d felt like he was out of step with the rest of humanity, like he’d been parachuted into an existence where everyone knew what they were doing except him. The feeling gradually went away, and he can only hope it will again, since he doesn’t need any more shit on his plate right now.

He glances back at the hotdog seller, but the guy’s pointedly ignoring him, presumably having foisted the hotdog that he ordered on the next customer. He can only assume that he didn’t actually disappear during the time he spent with Amara, so the vender probably thinks that his smartly-dressed customer is having the world’s longest absence seizure or maybe is just unhinged; probably the latter, which Dean can’t blame him for one iota. Truth be told, he _feels_ a little unhinged.

He swipes a hand across his lips, expecting to find something there. The ghost of that kiss haunts his memory, if not his skin. Amara... ‘ _what is she to you?_ ’ Crowley had asked, but how can he even begin to answer that question? When she’s around he starts to forget who _he_ is, like the simple act of being Dean Winchester is too difficult in her presence. 

He knows she’s a construct, designed to appeal to his vision of perfect beauty. She’s not the one night stand from the dive bar in whatever town he’s passing through. She’s not even the girl he’d proudly take home to introduce to his parents, if he’d had a life that looked like everyone else’s. She’s the one on the crystal pedestal; the unobtainable princess - out of his league by _light years_. The one who makes the consummate charmer in him wonder if he had any skills with the ladies _at all_.

And he’s honestly got no answer to Crowley’s question, because even though he’s not stupid enough to think that it’s simply her aesthetic appeal that’s making him crazy, he’s not made any headway since that first meeting in working out _what_ it is about her that’s threatening to pull him under like a riptide. He knows one thing though – it scares the shit out of him.

And even though he hasn’t got an explanation, he knows that he can’t keep this from Sam any longer. Sam, who wears his worry like a layer of clothing that he can never remove. Sam, who’s still not over losing him to the Mark less than twelve months ago. Sam, whose heart he’s going to break when he tells him of his incomprehensible, yet undeniable connection to The Darkness. Sam, who is contemplating returning to _The motherfucking Cage_ , in order to right the wrongs he did while trying to save Dean from himself. Sam says it was his choice, but Dean knows that really, that one’s on him too.

All his life, others have wanted to use him, to possess him, to _own_ him as a means to fulfilling their own destinies; Amara is just another name to add to that list. The shackles may be real or just metaphorical, but it all means the same in the end. He’d told Amara _no_ , and yet she’d still kissed him, making his free will as worthless and as much of a joke as Sam’s supposed visions from God.

Like an auditory hallucination, he hears Eric Stoltz’s character from ‘Some Kind of Wonderful’ making an impassioned plea to his father - _Then I’m nineteen, then I’m twenty. When does my life belong to me?_ As a teenage appreciator of the world according to John Hughes, he’d loved that movie – hell, he’d once or twice entertained the fantasy of making that same enquiry to his own father – but as an adult he knows the truth about life, or _his_ life at any rate, and he knows that the answer to that question is ‘never’.

As he stands in the too bright, too loud park, he thinks back on a life spent in captivity. There are the obvious experiences over the years – Hell, Purgatory, the countless times he’s been knocked out, tied up and held against his will by someone or something who means him harm, but these aren’t the memories that he returns to now. 

Instead, he thinks of the Mark – the symbol shaped like a knife that sliced through his humanity and hacked his soul to pieces until he’d have happily massacred Sam, like his brother meant nothing to him. 

He thinks of the First Blade – enslaving him and poisoning him with the urge to destroy anything and everything until he became a one-man End of Days.

He thinks of Amara – her ethereal beauty and her promises that she can make the world a better place, all with him by her side. He thinks of her eyes and the subtle dip and swell of her breasts, and how close he came to being lost in the illusion that she _wasn’t_ the ultimate evil – that she _wasn’t_ the one who would un-make everything, all over a petty sibling squabble. He knows in that moment that had he said yes, he would have been hers until the end of time. Always the monkey and never the organ grinder – dancing to someone else’s tune, even in the performance of his own life. 

Sam might have The Cage to fear, but Dean knows that he’s not free either. His prisons just come with more curves and edges.

**End**


End file.
